Heartflood
by Joanna C. Valente
after & for Lilith
I am too used to being
alone. The door is closed. You aren’t sure if it was ever
open to begin with. You told me
to learn invisibility, learn smallness, fit inside
a coffin, a kind of wooden box
you don’t plan on coming
out of, only into
existence, unexistence, non
existence, coming
into your coming
with orgasmic Jesus
who says, I hate everything I am and ever will be
is violence without meaning.
Take a fucking number.
Pain isn’t linear, baby.
Pain is a blood-orange sky suddenly turned
dark then suddenly not there anymore
and we were just in metal in a waterless limbo
in morning in nothing but internet waves
and missing texts and between
mouthsounds.
You’re always busy and always
Alone. I learn to ask you
For nothing.
I flushed down the painkillers
so I wouldn’t take them while you
were gone on a date
and I was lying in a new bed sweating
out myself like myself is a demon, alone
and this demon wasn’t worth.
You said I was doing it wrong.
You said I was better was I was drunk.
So I tried inverting my skin to become
scales, slither down on the wooden floor
belly down, splinters jutting
into me. It’s what I deserve.
This is how you buried me.
Pilates; or, Seven Words You Can’t Say on NPR’s F**** A** with Terry Gross
by Cooper Wilhelm
Every rite I do to call down the god of me
from his armchair in the sacred mountain of tomorrows
is another grand expulsion of void from which the void
recedes back into my hands and
from there, who knows.
Light as a balloon without air to weigh it down, insatiable
exhaustion rocks the bed frame
of the heart to sooth its wicked
chirps.
Each morning as the monster outside
of time molotovs Lugus Mercury in a silent arc
over all our homes, never to land, I send
one bright orange to my soul
in the hopes that it will see all the work I do to prove
it is not a craven fang sealing its wounds with the blood of others,
see that sweat and fear and marry me, this headless thing,
but no, my gifts just pile up at the front door
and I think, no, it’s fine, it’s in there, this
is just part of it.
There will be no big corner turned
to the new me,
it’s about adding weight so that eventually
there’s so much new me, old me gets out voted,
the way if you added up all the days of your life
and all the days you do not exist, your life might seem like
an observational error, but don’t freak out, that’s also true
about the moon, and everybody loves the moon.
Life is not an apology for death. Life is not an apology
for life, either. You can’t soak
the gone-bad out of meats,
you can’t cook trauma from the soul,
Trauma that word that starts with teeth.
I am washing mushroom caps for a last meal before sleep,
and these uncleanable nubs of the original dirt-made-flesh,
these petite nodes that pimple up atop the metric
tons of invisible fungal networks flowing under all,
edible clumps
of whatever God is made out of,
and every important aspect of the body
looks like the inside of an incisor
when you slice it down the middle
in a cat scan or a deli. Enough.
The heart builds another nest from pine needles.
The moon and acorns sink.
Enough, the heart is just a mollusk shell for blood.
Enough, the heart is just what would happen if you actually went up
and watered the moon back into being, “enough”
the heart shouts at us from the kitchen as
it peels grape after grape to serve as eyes
in the haunted house to come, enough.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body), #Survivor, (forthcoming, The Operating System), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault. They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Them, Brooklyn Magazine, BUST, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente / FB: joannacvalente
Cooper Wilhelm is a communist, and a witch, and the author of three books of poetry: Klaatu Verata Nikto (Ghost City Press/2016), DUMBHEART/STUPIDFACE (Civil Coping Mechanisms/2017), Swine Song (Business Bear Press/2018). He used to do a radio show where he interviewed witches, all of which is still available online. To book a tarot reading or yell at him, go to cooperwilhelm.com or twitter @cooperwilhelm